No Law in the Land: (Knights Templar 27)

by Michael Jecks

  ‘Now we are all safe at England, there seems less need,’ the bishop said wanly.

  ‘Safe, eh?’ Sir Richard said. ‘When we have to travel to find the king and tell him that his wife has left him and taken his son and heir; that the men the king set to guard them both have all gone over to the queen’s side instead of his own; and that we were powerless to do anything to support him in his endeavours? I think we might merit a little protection ourselves.’

  ‘The king is a reasonable man,’ Bishop Walter said.

  From the sharp glance Sir Richard de Welles threw at him, Baldwin could see that he didn’t believe the bishop’s words either.

  ‘My lord bishop,’ Baldwin said, ‘I am sure that you are right, but I confess to some concern that the king’s favourite may deprecate our efforts.’

  The bishop looked away without comment. There was no need to speak, for the three all knew the nature of Sir Hugh le Despenser.

  It was left to Sir Richard to rumble, ‘I would not trust that man if he told me grass grew green.’

  Baldwin smiled to himself. ‘I cannot deny that I would feel happier were we permitted to merely ride homewards. The thought of explaining ourselves to the king and Despenser fills me with discomfort.’

  Abbeyford Woods, south of Jacobstowe

  Bill Lark had woken after an unsettled sleep to find that a root had seemingly planted itself in the small of his back, while his neck felt as though it had been broken.

  He stood rotating his head while grimly surveying the ground about him. Poor devils, he said to himself, not for the first time, as he began to wander about some of the trees, finding dry, dead branches low on the saplings and smaller trees about the coppice. Soon he had a couple of armfuls and could start to reset the fire.

  Last night it had begun to rain almost as soon as he had lighted his fire, and then the sounds of night creatures had kept him awake too, so he had slept at best fitfully. When he had slept it was more a case of dozing, so now he felt on edge and fretful.

  When he had his fire cheerfully ablaze, he spent a few minutes wandering about the coppice again.

  First he walked around the camp itself, eyeing each of the bodies. It was curious, he noticed, that none was near the edge of the trees. It was as if they had been moved inwards, away from the thicker woodland all about. That was enough to make him scowl pensively.

  Next he walked about the edge of the trees themselves. There were many tracks crossing and recrossing here, mainly horses’ hoofs riding in towards the camp, and a few riding away. After making a complete circuit, he was forced to consider that there had been plenty of riders coming in, and that all had left by the entrance to the clearing, a muddied track made by the charcoal burners. So they had attacked from the woods, then departed by the roadway, either up towards Oakhampton or back towards Jacobstowe. There was even a set of boot prints leaving that way. Boots that had wandered about the camp. If he was right – and he was a moderate tracker – the boots overlapped some of the other marks on the ground, so this man had been here since the killings. Perhaps he had been here afterwards – but then again, he could have been one of the attackers.

  What did worry Bill was that he could see no sign of escape from the camp. There were no prints at all that he could discern in among the trees other than those horses riding in. That itself was not surprising, for the covering of leaves would make a man’s prints hard to see, but if there had been horses escaping, he would have expected to see evidence of their hoofs.

  Yes. It was clear enough what had happened. The fellows had been travelling, and had stopped here for the evening. A group of felons had found them, probably dismounted nearby, and then ringed them, shooting most of them down with arrows before wandering in and stabbing the survivors. Looking about him at the bodies, he wondered who these victims might have been.

  The man with the tonsure was the first to attract his attention. A clerk – perhaps someone more senior, an abbot or prior maybe. He looked too well fed to be someone lowly. Bill had to turn away from the man’s ravaged features. Clearly this was a man who had made himself enemies in life, unless someone was convinced that he was carrying more goods about him than he was admitting. But that was daft. No one would kill a man in this manner when all his goods were to be taken anyway. Unless they thought he was keeping something back. Treasure, or information?

  Close by was another man. This looked like a fellow who was more used to the bow than the pen. A mace or club had crushed the whole side of his face, making a foul mess of blood, bone and brains. At least his death would have been swift. Not like the monk.

  The brutality of those two deaths was shocking to a man like Bill, but so was the number of the other victims. No gang of outlaws would kill so wantonly. Not in Bill’s experience, anyway. He sat back on his haunches near the fire and stared around him. Just there, to the east, through the trees, he could see a long area of open pasture, and some cows munching contentedly with sheep walking round and round. There was the song of a blackbird not far away, and he could hear a cock crowing – no, it was a hen calling: ‘An egg, an egg.’ All seemed so normal, so sane, if he didn’t look at the ground around him. This was his land. His country; his responsibility. And someone had desecrated it.

  The idea of a band of murderers was alarming. Outlaws infested many parts of the country, and there was no reason why Devon should be exempt from their predations, and yet he didn’t get the impression that this was some random attack on a band of travellers. There was something too precise about it. The men who had committed this obscene act were surely not just robbers, they had not suddenly sprung in upon the camp and massacred the people in a rough melee.

  He had seen that kind of attack before. Usually there were a very clear series of indications. As the first men appeared, people would bolt, some flying hither and thither through the trees, seeking some kind of safety, and then the bodies would be more spread about. Here, it would seem that the camp had been attacked from all sides simultaneously. That spoke of discipline and organisation. The men who did this had a purpose. And he would make it his job to discover that purpose, if he could.

  If he could. The thought made him give a wry little grin to himself. Whether he could or not would depend on so much. And even if he did go to the effort, it would depend very much on the attitude of the coroner. So often the bastards were useless. They just lived for the money they could extort from others. Like this latest sheriff, from all he’d heard.

  Still, he was nothing if not thorough, so he wandered out beyond the fringe of trees, looking all about. It was as he reached the southernmost section of the clearing that he found something that made him give a quick frown. Here there were some heavily damaged bushes and brambles, as though something – or someone – had hurried through. But some of them had been dragged back the other way, too, so it appeared that there had been movement in both directions. He crouched, glancing all about him, wondering what story he was witnessing here, but he could make little sense of it. Then, as he cursed the rain, he saw some speckles on the grass. Nearby there was a larger splash. When fresh, this must have formed a pool. He touched it, and although it was difficult to be certain, he felt sure that it was blood. Perhaps it was a man who had left the camp to defecate, and who had hurried back when the attack started, only to be struck down as he returned?

  But looking back at the clearing, he was forced to wonder why the man’s body was not here. Perhaps he wasn’t wounded badly enough to collapse, but had continued on to the main camp, where he’d died with the others. Strange, though, he thought, as he peered down carefully. There was so much blood. If a man had been knocked down here, surely he would never have made it back to the main camp after losing all this blood.

  He heard voices. Retreating, he set his back to a tree, listening carefully, until he recognised one of them.

  ‘If you were trying to be quiet, you failed,’ he called.

  ‘Sweet Christ’s cods! Bill, what happened here?
’

  ‘John, I wish I knew. All I can say is, whoever did this wasn’t just mad. A lunatic would have been far less effective.’

  ‘How could one man do this?’ John Weaver said. He looked about him, taking in the sight. At his side, Art Miller pulled a face at the odours.

  ‘It was a large gang. Question is, who were they?’

  Chapter Two

  Woods north of Jacobstowe

  It had been a quiet night for Roger. The scene in the coppice last morning had shaken him more than he wanted to admit even to himself. Afterwards he had run quietly away. Before long he came to a vill, and crouched down, hiding. There was a woman in a little yard, calling and clucking to her chickens, a tall, strong woman, buxom and attractive, and he waited, watching her with something akin to longing, until she was done and went back inside, and he could hurry past and on to the north.

  No one wanted to be found near a scene like that, especially if a stranger to the area. Because if any man was ever to be thought a dangerous murderer, it was always easier to think such things of foreigners. Roger had no wish to be captured by men determined to find anyone who could suit the description of a stranger and outlaw.

  But it was not only the desire to put as many leagues as possible between himself and any posse that drove him on. It was also the memory of that appalling sight.

  In the past he had been used to such pictures of horror. There had been plenty of bodies to see after the French invasion of the territories about Saint Sardos, those of men and women, and none of them would come back to haunt him, he knew. Not even the little tableau of the two children would affect him. He had found them under a set of rugs, as though they had been hidden there with the heavy woollen material thrown over to conceal them, a little girl and a boy, neither more than four years old, if he had to guess. The boy had been cut almost entirely in half, as though someone had swung an axe at his breast. The girl’s head had been broken by a club or mace; her death would at least have been quick. Then the cloth had been cast over them again, untidily. Carelessly. They had been dealt with, so their covering could be returned.

  There had been many children slaughtered in Guyenne in the last months. Yes, he had come back to England to escape those sights now that the French officials were tightening their grip on the lands about Guyenne, but such things happened, and he had seen them, and he knew he was strong enough to survive this just as he had survived the others.

  No, the deaths themselves were not enough to give him sleepless nights or even to unsettle him. But he was disturbed now as he thought back to the scene.

  As he had entered the coppice, he had been prepared for it all. The smell of death lay over the place in the mizzly air like some foul miasma from a moorland bog, and he knew what he would see as soon as he reached it.

  He had stood silently a while, absorbing the images that came to him. A cart upended, the shafts pointing at the sky; a second collapsed where a wheel had been snapped away; two horses dead, one on its side, the other on its back, all four legs in the air, arrows in head and flanks, the rider nearby, with more arrows in his back. And another man near him, his head missing entirely. A woman … There were so many there, and none of them made any impression on him. He was a fighter – he had seen it all.

  Walking among them, he had found himself casting about carefully, for that was what a man did after a fight, but clearly there was no profit to be had from the bodies down here. All had been killed and their property taken from them with their lives. From the number of men here, there must have been some seven or eight carts just to cope with their goods, or a number of packhorses. So many travelling together for safety, thinking that there would be strength in their numbers. He would have thought that most were moderately wealthy people, but one group in particular was different. The man near the horse, he looked like a fighter. And not only him. Roger would guess from their build that some six or eight of the men here were warriors. They didn’t look like peasants, that was certain. The clothing, the boots and shoes, all pointed to people who were better off than the normal vill churl.

  Roger had squatted near a man’s body. The fellow had six arrows in him, and there was a wound in his eye like a stab wound, as though someone was going about the place and making sure of all the injured.

  He had the appearance of a fighter: he was fairly strong in the arm, with some scars to prove that he’d been in more than the average number of fights. There was no mail or armour, but when Roger looked at his wrists and neck, there were signs of chafing. He had worn some simple armour, which had been stripped from him, if Roger had to guess. No man-at-arms would be unaware of the value of mail, and it would be taken from the fallen, either to be altered for the new owner, or for sale.

  Others, when he looked, had similar marks. One was just the same, with the proof of armour and helm. When he added them up, he reckoned these two were men-at-arms, and eight others looked like bowmen. They each had the characteristically powerful muscles on their backs that were the inevitable result of regular practice as archers. From the look of them, these could well have been a force together, perhaps protecting something, he thought. And then he came across another figure.

  This was no warrior. He had the belly of an abbot, and the jowls to match. A tonsure in need of renewal, and the ink on his fingers, pointed to a clerk of some form. And yet he had been utterly despoiled. His feet were bare, but the flesh was soft and unmarked. Not a man used to walking barefoot, then. He had a chemise, but no cloak or surcoat, which looked out of place, and no jewellery. However, his fingers held the marks of rings. When Roger ran his own fingers over the first joints, he could feel where the skin was raised slightly in calluses about the outer edge of the rings the man had habitually worn. To his surprise there was no wooden cross about his neck. However, it was his face that jolted Roger more than anything else he had seen there that day, more than the proofs of theft. Because this fellow had been mutilated. Although he was blond, Roger couldn’t tell what colour his eyes were, because both had been taken out before he had had his throat cut. His death hadn’t been good.

  When he studied all the figures, there were nine who were clustered not too far from the monk, and these had two things in common: they all looked as though they were fighters of some sort, and they all had multiple arrow wounds. Only one was different – a fellow who had been stabbed five times in the back, and who was lying further away from the others, nearer to the perimeter. Surely he was killed first. Perhaps he had been the sentry?

  Yes, this was the sort of picture he had grown used to in Guyenne, but not here, not in England. Still, where men lived, others would die. It was a rule of life. And while it made him sad to see children killed, it was also natural. Children followed the armies into battle, children worked, and some died. But while he was ready for that, it was the sight of the other little figures that had caused him to pause and stare with shock.

  A puppy. A small black and white puppy, and its mother, she slashed and stabbed, the pup with a broken neck, both lying near a roll of torn and ruined clothing, as though they had been killed defending their master’s belongings. When he saw them, he suddenly found the breath stopping in his throat. It was so unnecessary. So pointless. Men and women, even the children too, could perhaps be viewed as threats. After all, it was possible that they might later be able to recognise the perpetrators of this violent little action and bring them to justice. But the dogs? There was no need to kill them too. He bent and picked up the two bodies, tears flooding his cheeks, cradling them for a long moment, before setting them down gently at the foot of a tree some way from the carnage of the camp.

  It was that, more than any of the human bodies, that made him pause and stare about him, as though seeing all the bodies for the very first time. Someone had chosen to kill this little group. No, not just kill them – wipe them out entirely.

  But why?

  Abbeyford Woods, south of Jacobstowe

  It was late that evening when Art
Miller returned to the camp. And now he had at least some information for Bill Lark and John Weaver. He refused to speak until he had seated himself before their fire. Once comfortable, with a pot of steaming cider before him, he began to tell all he had learned, his voice quiet and reflective.

  ‘Seems there was a group of ten from Tavistock in one party, them and two monks. Everyone remembered them. One monk was really foreign, they said, and had such a thick accent hardly anyone could listen to ’un without they felt mazed. T’other was English, and a cheery fellow, with a pretty little dog and a puppy he held in his robe. Only the snout stuck out, they said, and he made the children laugh to see him. They arrived in Oakhampton a couple of days ago, and were asking about the best route to leave the town. They met with a party of travellers. One was a young family, mother, father, two children.’ Art glanced at Bill, shaking his head. ‘All told how happy and cheerful the children were. Lovely, lively little brutes, they said. There were others, though: four pedlars and tranters with their goods. One fellow from east. Apparently he said that there were dangers on the Crediton road, and the travellers were persuaded to go with him. It was him took them all northwards.’

  ‘Did anyone know where he reckoned the problems were?’ Bill asked, frowning.

  ‘No one heard him say, but there was one merchant I spoke to, a fellow called Denfote from up Exbourne way, who said that Bow had grown hazardous for travellers. The new lord there is keen to take money from all who pass his demesne. Denfote said he would always bypass it now.’

  ‘Did he know this man’s name?’

  ‘Yes – Sir Robert de Traci. Apparently him and his son have taken to demanding tolls on any roads about there. They’re a nuisance generally, but their arrogance, he said, would lead to them killing someone soon, so Denfote thought.’

  ‘Seems he knows how to predict the future, then,’ Bill said, shaking his head. ‘So how many were there in total?’